This plugin can be used to reduce the size of the resulting image. Often
virtual volumes are much smaller than their reported size until any data
is written to them. During the bootstrapping process temporary data like
the aptitude cache is written to the volume only to be removed again.

The minimize size plugin employs various strategies to keep a low volume
footprint:

Mount folders from the host into key locations of the image volume to
avoid any unnecessary disk writes.

Use zerofree to
deallocate unused sectors on the volume. On an unpartitioned volume
this will be done for the entire volume, while it will only happen on
the root partition for partitioned volumes.

dpkg: dpkg (and debootstrap) specific configurations.
These settings not only affect the behavior of dpkg when
installing packages after the image has been created, but also
during the bootstrapping process. This includes the behavior of
debootstrap.
optional

locales: List of locales that should be kept.
When this option is used, all locales (and the manpages in those locales)
are excluded from installation excepting the ones in this list.
Specify an empty list to not install any locales at all.
optional